Basseterre, St. Kitts, July 15, 2020 (SKNIS): The new Minister of Agriculture, the Honourable Alexis Jeffers, visited 12 farms on July 14 to assess the measures needed to be put in place to ensure agriculture within the Federation is taken to the next level.
“My impressions on what we would have seen gives me hope in terms of what we can accomplish over the next five years and beyond,” said Honourable Jeffers. “Of course, there are challenges that we have to overcome and there are some positives that we can build on and this trip has certainly given us a little bit of both,” he said.
The Honourable Minister announced that “We from the Ministry and Department of Agriculture are committed to ensuring that you the farmers who we depend on are the main stakeholders in the process.”
“In St. Kitts, I see lots of opportunities here that we can explore and also exploit,” said the Minister of Agriculture. However, he said that “land is available, but it is how the farmers utilize the plots of land to produce at the level that the department and the entire island of St. Kitts can be proud of.”
He also said that sustainability and resilience are at the focal points of the Federation’s collective minds and to achieve such, the ‘ingredients’ must come from the Ministry of Agriculture and the Federal Government.
“We have now to sit down, come up with the strategies, plans, programmes and policies to ensure that we are doing what we have to do to guarantee that agriculture is not just a buzzword in terms of what it can do as a sector but it is doing what it should do in terms of ensuring it is providing livelihoods, providing food for our people and providing a secured and solid future,” Minister Jeffers said.